Airbus is now offering sharklet retrofits for in-service Airbus A320s and A319s after having formally launched the initiative with JetBlue Airways. The sharklets have so far only been available for newly delivered aircraft and as a retrofit for aircraft manufactured with structurally reinforced wings. The devices are helping to deliver a fuel-burn improvement of up to 4%, or 100 nm more range, according to Airbus.
At first glance, Hong Kong's strength as an airfreight hub for China is remarkable. To go through the city, most of its traffic, goods from mainland China, must clear customs twice. Yet Hong Kong International Airport not only overcomes that disadvantage; it is now also the world's largest freight airport, handling 3.98 million metric tons in 2011, just ahead of Memphis (Tenn.) International Airport's 3.92 million tons. And that was before capacity at Hong Kong grew by half this year, with the opening of a third giant terminal for Cathay Pacific Airways.
The Textron AirLand Scorpion light attack aircraft, which is scheduled to make its first flight in the next few weeks, continues to capture—and hold—the attention of Europeans. Although its developers carefully avoid calling it a “low-cost” fighter proposal, it is obvious that their ultimate goal is to offer a two-seat twinjet costing a fraction of more conventional aircraft. This is an attractive proposition, of course, in an environment of increasingly restricted and uncertain defense budgets.
One of the unintended consequences of the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) and its annual threat of sequestration—the automatic, widespread budget rescissions plaguing federal agencies since March—is the turnabout that will occur in the ratio of Defense Department procurement to research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E). According to analyst Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank here, since fiscal 1955, the ratio has averaged 2.1, meaning the Pentagon was spending more than $2 in procurement for every $1 of RDT&E.
Eclipse Aerospace has delivered its first Eclipse 550 very light jet to Fred Phillips, president of Petrolift Aviation Services of Shreveport, La. Phillips has owned two Eclipse 500s. The upgraded EA550 features a synthetic vision, XM satellite weather, dual flight management systems with WAAS LPV and antiskid brakes.
Franklin Miller has been appointed chairman of the board of directors of the Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass. He succeeds John Gordon. New members of the board are Joanne Maguire and Lena Goldberg. Michael Wallace, director of the nuclear energy policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has been named a member of the Draper's corporation. Miller is a principal at the Scowcroft Group and member of the U.S.
Martine Ohayon has become director communications and events for Montreal-based Airports Council International. She held a similar position at the International Air Transport Association and was director of communications at Canada Steamship Lines. Ohayon succeeds Cheryl Marcell, who is now deputy director for business development at Norman Y. Mineta San Jose (Calif.) International Airport.
This week, Aviation Week publishes two editions. On the cover at the far left, at GE's 7,000-acre Peebles, Ohio, test site, CFM's Leap-1A undergoes tests for the Airbus A320neo. Versions of the Leap family, CFM's first all-new design since the first CFM56 of the early 1970s, will also power Boeing's 737 MAX and the Comac C919 (page 42). CFM photo by Rob Butlet. Our MRO Edition contains additional coverage of maintenance, repair and overhaul. The cover shows CFM56-3 and CFM56-5B engines at AeroTurbine's Miami facility.
Jim Meier has been named vice president-government business development for the Greenwich AeroGroup of Wichita. He was senior vice president-aviation services for the Sabreliner Corp.
It's not just that the USAF wants to get rid of the A-10 Warthog, it seems as though it wants to get rid of the A-10 community. “Hog Drivers” just don't behave with Aim-High correctness. They seem to relish improvising Plans B and C when Plan A goes awry. This degree of shared independence flies in the face of “prudent” institutional constraint. USAF, and certainly the U.S., need the venerable Warthog's unmatched firepower and resilience, but administrative angst will see to it that this does not happen.
The U.K. RAF will retire the last of its Lockheed C-130K Hercules transport aircraft this week as it prepares for the entry into service of the Airbus A400M Atlas. The RAF has operated 66 C-130Ks, the first entering service in 1967. Since then, the type has supported almost every British military operation. The C-130K fleet has dwindled in size since the introduction of the modernized C-130J. The remaining 24 Js are expected to operate until around 2022.
Aviation Partners Inc. (API) is offering to refit any Boeing Business Jets with its split scimitar winglet (see photo). The modification is already being adapted by airlines operating the Boeing 737, from which the BBJ is derived. The modification is said to improve fuel burn by 2.5-3% and thus increase range by 200 nm. Gary Dunn, API's vice president of sales and marketing, says he expects operators of “a very healthy percentage” of the roughly 130 delivered BBJs to adopt the signature modification.
Doug Gerull has been named chief operating officer of Surrey Satellite Technology U.S., Englewood, Colo. He was cofounder and a director of DigitalGlobe and had been executive vice president of the Intergraph Corp.
I believe reader Robert J. Stewart is incorrect in his letter “Old Becomes New” (AW&ST Oct. 7, p. 10), in which he credits Alexander Kartveli as the designer of the Fairchild Republic A-10. Pierre Sprey—working with Hans Rudel in the 1960s—was one of the early minds consulting on the A-10. Kartveli may have been assigned to supervise production of the aircraft, but he was not the designer. Flemington, N.J.
On the eve of the NBAA convention, Bombardier marked Learjet's 50th anniversary by presenting the first two Model 75s off the line to their new owners: a real estate businessman and a Canadian charter company. Both aircraft are replacing Lear 45s. The updated aircraft features a Garmin G5000 flight deck and Honeywell TFE-731-40B engines, and carries a price tag of $13.7 million.
Nextant Aerospace plans to remanufacture Beechcraft King Air C90s, replacing the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT-6 engines with GE H80 turboprops and the Rockwell Collins Pro Line 21 with Garmin's G1000 integrated avionics panel. The refurbished aircraft will carry a Nextant warranty. The Cleveland company said it chose to rework the C90 because of its large installed base of more than 1,500 aircraft, and so it would serve as a low-cost entry-level turbine aircraft. The projected price for what Nextant calls the G90XT is $2.2 million, or about half that of a new model.
